Back

On being back in Belgium.
The people speak my language. Small thing, yet rather significant. Especially considering that I’m getting less and less certain to what “my language” is exactly. Not for the first time either.
On the plane from London to Brussels there were some people from Antwerp. Trust me, you can tell. I really felt like going up to them and asking them, in English, to shut the f*ck up. I restrained myself. They really weren’t that annoying. But there could have been more pleasant ways to ease me back into my mother tongue.
In the Brussels airport, I was confronted first with a bunch of irritating f*ckwads who didn’t know how to use the bloody ticket machine. After waiting for ten aggravating minutes (I had to catch that train) it’s my turn. My turn to fail, it turns out. The machine had given out.
Combine this with a fortunate lack of Euro’s, I was f*cked. I had spent my last 5 euro’s in London on two espresso’s (I got change in extremely useful derivatives of pounds... which I kindly gave as a tip).
Luckily for me the trainconductress was the friendly assisting kind. And she spoke my mother tongue too. My luck knows no boundaries, turns out. With the use of my SIS card (national heath card with chip. You gotta love Europe) I got a temporary ticket, to be paid within 14 days.
I arrived in Brussels South (Bruxelles Midi) (Brussel Zuid) to find out I had missed a train by less than five minutes.... lo-ve-ly.
I then bumped into a Canadian I used to hang out with last year in Leuven. He had just gotten back from (the) Gent(se feesten). The world in small indeed. I presented him with a pack of clove cigarettes. He was sufficiently grateful and we proceeded to smoke a cigarette on the platform. He then took a train to leuven and I took off to my own platform where I intended to spend the next three quarters in quiet contemplation of my fate. On the platform I encountered a couple I had spoken too in Brussels Airport (yes. The f*ckwads). They turned out to be a nice couple from Bruges and were taking the same train as I was. They had just come back from Rhodos. I had another cigarette with the lady.
The social-cementing-skills of cigarettes are heavily underrated. Sure, they may kill, but they will provide you with some entertainment on the way there.
There was a huge gathering of people of the black persuasion in the train station. I heard on the platform from some drunk people that they had just shaken the hand of the Senegalese king/president. Me being the clever chap I am, I put two and two together (I arrived at pi for some reason) and concluded that that was what the gathering was about.
The drunk people were from Denderleeuw, I have just found out. I would have never guessed.
1:02 AM, Belgium, 26th of juli